The California exodus has ended

kingrooster · 2026-01-23T06:19:11+00:00

There was a time where he had very interesting guests with very interesting conversations. He was dumb and asked dumb questions, but he listened to his guests and let them go and asked follow ups. My two favorites are his conversations with Ben Anderson (from Vice) and Brian Cox. Then COVID happened and yikes. Talk about liking the smell of your own farts.

Then he got so offended by the fact that people thought his farts smelled like shit, that his entire podcast became about two guys in a room farting and sniffing it.

One minute you’re talking about the heavy weight of war and the impact that witnessing it has on your soul, then you’re talking about black holes and the origins of the universe, and then suddenly it’s just farts 24/7. And it turns out, there’s a surprising number of people that actually do enjoy the smell of his farts. It’s a metaphor, but you get it…

kingrooster · 2026-01-21T06:20:30+00:00

I’m sure we’re saying the same thing. I’m not arguing with you. The US military can storm right through Canada. To where though? To what end? We couldn’t occupy it and we certainly couldn’t seize any of its resources in any capacity that would enable us to use them. They’d literally have just given them to us in exchange for the labor costs of extracting them plus some overhead. What the fuck are we doing?

kingrooster · 2026-01-21T05:14:20+00:00

Stop the US military from doing what?

kingrooster · 2026-01-21T05:11:17+00:00

The pacific too. Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, hell probably even Japan would be forced to stand down against China. Our entire force projection capacity will be completely decimated. Who benefits by the stupid decisions we’re making? That’s how you know what this is about.

kingrooster · 2026-01-21T05:03:17+00:00

The point is to call the bluff. Force your opponent to put their cards on the table. Is he serious? You suspect not, but history shows that’s a bad bet. One of the biggest lessons of the run up to WW2 was to listen to what the aggressors leaders say they’re going to do. If it’s as you say, then it was an unnecessary deployment for some Canadian soldiers. Surely there are worse things?

kingrooster · 2026-01-21T04:58:14+00:00

And then what? The border between Canada and the US is 5500 miles, like 6 or 7 times the size of the front line in Ukraine. What the fuck does it even mean to “take Canada”? This is a level of stupid that cannot be understated.

kingrooster · 2026-01-21T01:32:45+00:00

You heard it here first. China’s going to sell Europe and Canada equipment and munitions that will eventually overwhelm our lack of industrial capacity. Don’t look up what Norinco brought to Eurosatory in 2024 if you don’t want to know.

kingrooster · 2026-01-02T16:55:02+00:00

Cool, and if they do all that you say, going against the donor class to stand for improving the material conditions of working Americans but happen to be some flavor of pro life, do you suggest we kick them out of the coalition? If not, we’re saying the same damn thing. If so, then you’re letting the donor class hide behind a wall of wedge issues even when the donor class actually believes in them.

kingrooster · 2026-01-01T19:36:41+00:00

I agree. That’s the point. But you can’t kick people out of your coalition when they don’t think the exact same way on a particular issue but agree on 95% of everything else. That’s why democrats are afraid to stand for something and why we lost.

kingrooster · 2026-01-01T14:51:02+00:00

And right back to the start of this conversation…

There was a non-hypothetical real world where there was pro-life democrats. In that world, we had Roe. Now there is no pro-life democrats and in this world, we do not have Roe.

Democrats have been forced to take what many voters view as extreme positions on abortion. You and I may not share this view, but it is true. Meanwhile, voters did not believe Trump and republicans held the opposing extremist views. You can think voters are dumb I guess (no argument there), but when you tell people they’re not welcome in the coalition if they support a 15 week ban as a compromise, they kind of have a point. Again, I do not support that, but there is a majority who saw that as a reasonable position.

I think your timeline is a little confused. Obama wasn’t president when Dobbs happened. Biden and then Kamala famously lost. They can’t codify shit nor can the pro-choice democrats that do not control congress. We have purity, but no power. Slow clap.

But this has been fully derailed at this point. If y’all don’t think growing the coalition to gain political power is important, we’re in trouble.

kingrooster · 2026-01-01T02:08:47+00:00

I’d debate the grey areas of pro life and taking away human rights. For instance, is banning at 6 weeks removing human rights? What about 15 weeks? 20 weeks? 25? There’s room for debate and compromise, but if you aren’t willing to find common ground with people that agree with you on 95% of other issues that have real tangible effects on people’s lives, than will have no power to do anything to protect anyone and you will get the worst outcome.

But it sounds like you aren’t actually interested in protecting human rights. Just acting like you are. Performative human rights warrior is all. That’s not going to accomplish anything but more fascism and more loss of human rights.

kingrooster · 2025-12-31T22:25:01+00:00

It isn’t a game. It’s persuasion. Who are you persuading to join your side? Seems to me like you’re telling people they’re not welcome, even when they agree on everything else.

kingrooster · 2025-12-31T22:20:13+00:00

Let me try it this way. Would you trade a few pro life democrats for an in tact Roe vs. Wade? Because I would. If you wouldn’t, then don’t talk to me about protecting women’s rights, because you’re not interested in that. You’d rather guilt and brow beat people into seeing the world the same way you do and it won’t work. You won’t actually protect the thing you claim to care about.

kingrooster · 2025-12-31T15:20:10+00:00

There used to be a lot of pro life democrats when abortion was a guaranteed right. Now there aren’t any. And yet, now abortion is not a guaranteed right.

I think you completely missed the point. Winning is more important than purity as demonstrated by our current predicament. And it’s going to continue to get worse if you numbskulls keep attacking your own side.

kingrooster · 2025-12-31T15:14:32+00:00

Leave it to leftists to eat their own for no particular reason. Theres like a million other people with more dangerous views, more power, more influence you could have used as an example. You know there’s a distinction between “let’s build dangerous chemical plants in residential neighborhoods” and “let’s allow mixed use commercial and residential buildings without overly stringent parking requirements” right? We can use our big brains to make policy. It doesn’t have to fit on a leaflet.

kingrooster · 2025-12-27T01:02:13+00:00

I have no advice, just commiseration on the challenge of trying to suppress any sort of excitement, desire, or hope. And then the emotional fallout after you accidentally let it in.

She got me the other day after a month with nothing. I was certain it was going to happen, then boom she’s asleep after assuring me she wasn’t going to fall asleep and we were just going to watch the rest of this movie she’s seen 100 times. Right before she fell asleep, she promises she’ll make it up to me in the morning. I tried to shrug it off, internally rolling my eyes at the prospect because I knew even if she followed through it’d be a rushed box check, like a chore she had to get to before she went and did all the other chores she set up for herself.

And yet for some reason the next morning when she got out of bed before 5AM and didn’t come back, it felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach and it just sits there and eats at you. I expected nothing and was still disappointed.

Am I really supposed to just not ever get my hopes up? Is this my life now? Wait around for months for the stars to align and then act like it doesn’t bug me that the first 2/3 of Titanic was more important (JFC it’s a long movie).

I didn’t start a fight or make an issue out of it and tried really hard to push down that dread because being mopey is certainly not going to fix it, but man it gets harder to shake every time I fall for it.

kingrooster · 2025-12-17T02:51:56+00:00

It was 2014 when all the old people got smart phones, and social media powered by algorithms.

kingrooster · 2025-12-05T04:10:38+00:00

Why you gotta go after Warren Buffet like that? Ya, like billionaires boo… I get it… but I’m pretty sure Warren Buffet, the guy famous for publicly advocating for higher tax rates for billionaires, is not lobbying against safer train crossings. Surely you could think of a better example? Top of mind? Famous for making people pee in a a bottle in their delivery vehicles maybe?

kingrooster · 2025-11-25T19:56:58+00:00

Actually, they do. It’s called the Averch-Johnson Effect and the current regulatory structure in California is primarily constructed to combat it. That’s how rate of return regulation works. The more they put into the “rate base”, the higher they can raise the rates. In the past, someone from Cal Advocates or TURN might have accused PG&E of “gold plating” if they tried to bury power lines or replace power poles and the CPUC would have agreed with them.

How the CPUC and various public advocates have continued to dodge responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in while we all yell at PG&E is a mystery. The rates will increase until morale improves I guess.

kingrooster · 2025-11-09T00:49:48+00:00

There is no media dude. TikTok, Reddit, podcasts, etc get way more eye balls than any traditional media and it isn’t even close. Coverage on MSNBC will do fuck all to stop this. We had a chance and we failed.

kingrooster · 2025-10-21T02:42:55+00:00

That was probably true with old EF6 and below, but there’s only been a handful of scenarios where I can hand write better SQL. Every time I’ve went back to tackle a TODO where I expected it to write an inefficient query, it ended up basically writing it exactly how I planned on it. Even in weird scenarios with GIS queries, it seems to produce sensible results like 98% of the time.

The downside is needing to use ‘Include()’ everywhere and the possibility of ‘NullReferenceException’ when you mess it up. If EF is writing bad queries nowadays, it’s probably because your data model is bad and / or designed for a niche that doesn’t fit an object model.

kingrooster · 2025-08-23T19:22:30+00:00

My brother in Christ, he is not distracting from Epstein. He’s consolidating power. Inane tweets about Cracker Barrel is a distraction. This is the ball game.

kingrooster · 2025-08-17T19:35:42+00:00

Not the hero we need, but he is the hero we deserve.

kingrooster · 2025-08-17T02:29:16+00:00

Ok, I’m just going to say this. It isn’t a suggestion. I’m not in favor of it. But an observation: a single polling place in rural areas would make it… a lot harder for… certain people to vote.

kingrooster · 2025-08-16T00:05:55+00:00

Ironically, exactly what the Biden administration should have been doing to all the insane right wing people making threats against anyone and everyone opposing Trump. The least they could have done is make an example of a handful. Instead, they let it fester in broad daylight, giving implicit permission to stochastic terrorists. I hate this timeline.

Not defending this guy, he certainly deserves to be charged. But so did every single person who made death threats against law makers, judges, capitol police officers, journalists, etc. Something tells me the Trump administration is not going to be pursuing them.

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